Australia – Let them eat hemp

Paula Goodyer

Food regulation in Australia can be baffling sometimes. It’s so easy to walk into a supermarket and fill your trolley with foods that can potentially undermine your health like litres of soft drink and cheap doughnuts. Yet if you want to buy hemp seed, a source of vitamins and minerals and a rich source of protein and healthy omega-3 fat, it’s still officially banned for use as a food.

However, as the man behind the counter in a health food store selling $12 packets of hemp seed explained to me recently, he was legally able to sell me the product providing I only used it for non food purposes – as a body scrub perhaps- and didn’t accidentally sprinkle some on my muesli.